While shopping for vacation clothes, my husband and I passed a display of bathing suits. It had been at
least ten years and twenty pounds since I had even considered buying a bathing suit, so I sought my husband's
advice. "What do you think?" I asked. "Should I get a bikini or an all-in-one?" "Better get a bikini," he
replied. "You'd never get it all in one."

A GENERAL store owner hires a young female clerk with a penchant for
wearing very short skirts and thong panties.
One day a young man enters the store, glances at the clerk, and glances at the loaves of bread behind the counter. Noticing the length of her
skirt (or general lack thereof) and the location of the raisin bread he has a
brilliant idea.
"I'd like some raisin bread, please," the man says politely.
The clerk nods and climbs up a ladder to reach the raisin bread, which
is located on the very top shelf.
The young man, standing almost directly beneath her, is provided with
an excellent view, just as he had surmised he would be.
Once she descends the ladder he muses that he really should get 2
loaves as he is having company for dinner.
As the clerk retrieves the 2nd loaf of bread, one of the other male
customers notices what is going on. Thinking quickly, he quickly requests his own loaf of raisin bread so that he can continue to enjoy the view.
With each trip up the ladder the young lady seems to catch the eye of
another male customer.
Pretty soon each person is asking for raisin bread, just to see the
clerk climb up and down. After a few trips the clerk is tired! ! and irritated and thinking that she is really going to have to try this
raisin bread for herself. Finally, once again atop the ladder, she stops and fumes, glaring at the men standing below. She notices an elderly
man standing amongst the throng staring up at her.
Thinking to save herself a trip she yells, "Is yours raisin too?"
"No," croaks the feeble old man...."But it's startin' to twitch.

An elderly lady did her
shopping and upon return found 4 males in her car. She dropped her shopping bags and drew
her handgun, proceeding to scream at them at the top of her lungs that she "knows how
to use it and will shoot if required.... So get out of MY car!"
The 4 men didn't wait around for a second invitation. They got out and ran like mad,
where upon the lady proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and got
into the drivers seat.
Small problem: Her key wouldn't fit the ignition. Her car was identical and parked four
or five spaces further down.
She loaded her bags into her car and drove to the police station. The sergeant that she
told the story to nearly tore himself in two with laughter and pointed to the other end of
the counter where 4 pale white males were reporting a carjacking by a mad, elderly, white
woman.....No charges were filed.

I ONCE worked in a department store's service booth, at which customers could buy
tickets for concerts, sports events and theatre productions. One day a woman approached
the window where I was on duty. Pushing several packages at me, she said, "I need
three shirt boxes, one tie box and a box big enough for a casserole dish."
"You'll have to go to gift-wrapping for that," I explained politely. Stepping
back for a better look at the sign above me, the woman shouted "Don't give me the run
around, young lady. That sign says BOX OFFICE, and I want my boxes now!"

A BLACK woman entered a store's appliance department and said that she wanted to return
a defective toaster. The white saleswoman asked what was wrong with it. "When the
toast pops up," replied the customer, "one comes out looking like you, and the
other comes out looking like me." She got another toaster.

A MAN purchased a wing chair and asked that it be wrapped so that his wife couldn't
guess the contents of the package. Barney, a high-school student who worked for us, spent
hours gift wrapping it, struggling with a bulky refrigerator packing case, reams of paper
and metres and metres of tape. The giant box looked stunning as it was loaded on a truck
for delivery. But, when the customer strode into the store and thrust a card at us that he
had found tucked under the ribbon, we weren't sure Barney's efforts had been a big
success. In our gift wrapper's careful printing was this message: "Next year, give
Jewellery."

STANDING in line in a hardware store, I noticed a woman looking at a rack full of signs
priced at $1.79 each. She took one out and put it back a couple of times. Suddenly she
held up the sign that read "Help Wanted," and asked the clerk: "Is there a
discount on this sign if it's just going over the kitchen sink?"

WHILE delivering for a department store, I had to drive to
a house 30 kilometers out of the city, and travel over three unpaved roads plus two
practically washed-out bridges. And I had to walk the final 100 meters. When at last I
reached the address, there was a note tacked to the front door with this message: GONE TO
THE COUNTRY.

IN THE store where I work I spotted a young man dressed in shorts,
sneakers and a green
trash bag in which he had torn holes for his head and arms. "The woman at the door
wouldn't let me in without a shirt on," he explained.

WHILE visiting my parents in Florida, I was browsing through
the brochure for a giant flea market we planned to visit the next day. The brochure
boasted "acres of vendors," and I remarked how huge it must be. "I
drove your mother there last week," Dad commented. "It only takes two
hours to go through the place." "Two hours!" said my mother. "It
took me a lot longer than that." "Oh, I know," Dad said, "but
you stop to look at things."

MY FRIEND has an insatiable appetite for seafood. On a return
trip to his native Newfoundland after an absence of some years, he went to a fish store in
St. John's. He soon realized that though the facade of the city had changed some what, the
linguistic acrobatics remained the same. Seeing some beautiful lobsters on display,
he asked the proprietor, "How much a pound are your lobsters?" "We
doesn't sell them by the pound. We sells them by the each." "Well, how
much are they each?" "They bes two dollars a pound-each," came the
reply.

ONE saleswoman in a candy store always had customers lined up
waiting, while other clerks stood around with nothing to do. The owner of the store asked
the popular one for her secret. "It's easy," she answered. "The other
clerks scoop up more than a pound of candy and then start taking away. I always scoop up
less than a pound and then add to it."

THE owner of a doughnut shop solved the problem of accurately
filling his customers' orders when they came in sleepy in the morning and pointed vaguely
at the trays of French, glazed and cake doughnuts. Tossing out the gourmet names with
which he had labeled his goods, he attached to each tray a printed card saying:
"Them," "These" or "Those."

ONE day in a shopping mall, I lost a gold bracelet.
Immediately, I went to the lost and found to post a notice. While there I met a woman who
was also putting up a notice. As she passed me, she gave me a big toothless smile.
When I left I glanced at what she had written and chuckled as I read: Lotht -- Will
perton or perthonth who found the thet of falthe teeth pleathe phone 621-0000.

AFTER toiling over a 1000-piece puzzle, I was unable to
finish it because there was one piece missing. I returned the box to the store and
explained why. The clerk was obviously not a puzzle aficionado. As she refunded my
money, she asked pleasantly, "How far did you get before you realized that there was
a piece missing?"

WALKING downtown one day, I noticed that a music store had
just opened. Inside the shop, my attention was caught by a huge Oriental gong, and I went
up to take a closer look. The gong was more than a meter in diameter. On a rope next
to it hung a half-meter-long mallet with a top the size of a softball. A piece of
notebook paper bearing one word in large letters was taped to the centre of the gong.
The word was "NO!"

As A mannequin model for a department store, I sit or stand
as still as a statue. When I move, I do so slowly and somewhat mechanically. One day two
women stood near me debating whether I was alive or a robot. The one who was convinced
that I was a machine tried to persuade her friend. "Now tell me, Ethel," she
said. "Does that look like a real face to you?"

A MAN came up to my cash register at a department store
carrying an armful of fishing paraphernalia, including hip waders, lures and a fishing
pole. As he wrote a cheque for several hundred dollars, he said, "You know, it would
be a lot cheaper if you just sold fish here."

WHILE I was working in a fashionable clothing store, a
high-school graduate came in and tried on a strapless gown which she modeled for her
mother and grandmother. It was obvious they disliked the tight-fitting dress. The young
woman seemed to take this as a sure sign it looked attractive on her and asked me to put
it aside. Later in the day she returned and said I could put the dress back on the rack.
Sympathizing, I commented, "It's a shame they wouldn't let you buy it."
"Not at all," she replied with a grin. "They wanted me to get this one
after I found one they disliked even more!"

A WOMAN came into my friend's flower shop and asked if she
could get "a nice, fresh arrangement for twenty-five dollars." As my friend said
what she'd get for that price, the woman exclaimed, "Oh, won't that be lovely!"
"No, ma'am," was the reply. "At that price it will be nice; lovely starts
at forty-five dollars."

Upon arriving home, a husband was met at the door by his
sobbing wife. Tearfully she explained, "It's the druggist - he insulted me terribly
this morning on the phone." Immediately the husband drove downtown to confront the
druggist and demand an apology.
Before he could say more than a word or two, the druggist told him,
"Now, just a minute - listen to my side of it. This morning the alarm failed to go
off, so I was late getting up. I went without breakfast and hurried out to the car, just
to realize that I locked the house with both house and car keys inside. I had to break a
window to get my keys. Then, driving a little too fast, I got a speeding ticket. Later,
when I was about three blocks from the store, I had a flat tire. When I finally got to the
store there was a bunch of people waiting for me to open up. I got the store opened and
started waiting on these people, and all the time the darn phone was ringing off the
hook."
He continued, "Then I had to break a roll of nickels against the cash
register drawer to make change, and they spilled all over the floor. I got down on my
hands and knees to pick up the nickels  the phone was still ringing  when I
came up I cracked my head on the open cash drawer, which made me stagger back against a
showcase with a bunch of perfume bottles on it. . .half of them hit the floor and broke.
Meanwhile, the phone is still ringing with no let up, and I finally got back to answer it.
It was your wife - she wanted to know how to use a rectal thermometer. . .
. . .so, I TOLD HER!"

AT 9 P.M., the manager of our store announced over the
intercom that we were closing and asked that the customers come to the register to be
checked out. At 9:20, a few dawdlers still remained, and the manager came on the intercom
again: "Attention, shoppers! Our store is now closed. If you didn't make it out
before the doors were locked, there are sleeping accommodations in the back. Thank you and
good night." The stragglers were at the register in less than a minute.

"ALL I wanted to buy was a plain old pair of
sneakers," a woman told her friend. "But the shoe business has been taken over
by blatant marketing gimmicks. Do you realize shoes have names these days? 'Pegasus,
"Hurricane, "Motivator' -- there's even one called 'Charisma.' Can you
imagine?" "What colour did you get?" "Miami Vice
pink."

EARLY one morning I arrived at the shopping center and
instructed my black retriever, Beast, to remain in the back seat of my open car. In
a store, out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of black wavy hair on the far side
of the center counter. I lunged at the culprit, screaming, "Beast! What
are you doing here?" Only then did I realize I had grabbed the store clerk, who
was placing supplies beneath the counter. He leaped back with terror in his eyes.
Apologizing, I explained that I thought he was my dog. He backed up even farther.
At that point I gave up and left the store.

A MAN ahead of me at the counter handed nine greeting cards
to the cashier. She looked increasingly puzzled as she rang up the prices.
"Sir, these are all belated birthday cards!" she finally burst out. "Have
you actually forgotten that many birthdays?" "Not yet," the man
replied. "But I believe in planning ahead."

I'D BEEN watching the classified ads for a good buy in a used
video camera when I spotted just what I needed. For a reasonable price, somebody named
Dick was offering a "complete system, loaded with advanced features." But
what made it just the right deal for me was the assurance, "Takes only perfect
pictures, every possible mistake has already been made. "

LAST summer my wife and I met a couple at a restaurant.
After lunch, the women decided to go shopping, and I invited the man to go sailing.
While we were out on the water, a storm blew up. The tide had gone out, and we were
down wind trying to work our way back through a narrow channel. At one point the boat
grounded and we had to climb overboard and shove with all our might to get it back in
deeper water. As my new friend stood there, ankle deep in muck, the wind blowing his
hair wildly, rain streaming down his face, he grinned at me, and with unmistakable
sincerity said, "Sure beats shopping!"

WHILE chatting with my neighbour, I mentioned that my wife
was out bargain hunting. Just then the car pulled in the driveway, and my wife got
out, loaded down with packages. "Well," he observed, "it looks like
your wife is a pretty good shot."

MY SISTER decided to give her friend a tray of cheeses for
Christmas. She went to a small store which usually carried everything. "Would
you have such a thing as a small tray of cheeses?" she asked the clerk.
"Oh, my, I don't think so, but I'll go and look." After a long wait, the
clerk returned. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "we don't.
But," she added helpfully, "we do have a platter of the Last Supper."

WHILE shopping I encountered a young mother of five trying
her best to keep all the children in sight, but each was determined to explore in a
different direction. The harried woman, noticing me watching, rolled her eyes and said in
a weary voice, "O what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to conceive."

AFTER selecting a number of items at a ladies wear shop, I
was pleasantly surprised when the cashier asked for considerably less than I had
anticipated paying. When I arrived home I checked the items against the sales slip and
discovered she had rung up a $49.95 item as $19.95. I returned to the shop with the sales
slip and explained what had happened. After I handed her my cheque for the $30 difference,
her response was not what I expected: "Can you show me two pieces of ID?"

I LOVE old things, and one day while browsing in an antique
shop, I found some blue and yellow canisters that were perfect for my kitchen. The
proprietor told me that they had been made on a pottery wheel in 1930 by an old lady who
had never left the farm. Pleased, I picked up the smallest canister to look at it
more closely and was shocked to find "Made in Japan" stamped on the bottom.
"Well," the flustered dealer said, "maybe she did leave the farm
once."

WHEN I stopped at the liquor store to buy some champagne for
a wedding gift, the clerk asked to see my ID. "But I'm twenty-nine years
old," I protested. "I can show you pictures of my three sons to prove
it." "They could be your nephews," she replied, unimpressed.
"How about a driver's license?" Rummaging through my purse, I took out two
rubber worms, a matchbox car, a set of baby keys, an odd sock, a smashed pack of bubble
gum and a ball. But I couldn't find my license. "Forget it," the
clerk said suddenly. "Only a mother of three boys would have that collection in
her purse!"

THERE are many different versions of the china-shop verse,
"Lovely to look at, delightful to hold, but if you break it, consider it sold."
One day while shopping I came across a variation that was down right threatening. It
read: "Nice to look at, nice to hold, but if you break it, you will receive five free
kittens." Needless to say, I did not touch a thing.

WHEN I ran out of icing sugar, I asked my husband to pick
some up for me on his next trip out. He couldn't find any baking items at the store
and finally approached a salesclerk. "Can you tell me where the icing sugar is
kept?" he asked. The clerk looked at him skeptically and replied, "Sir,
this is Canadian Tire."

MY FRIEND and I bought a small stereo system at a department
store. We didn't want to wait for it to be delivered so we asked if we could borrow a
dolly to transport it to our car, parked a block away. We were given permission,
provided we returned it to the stereo department. I under took to return the dolly
and was struggling to get it back through a door to the store when a young man came to
help. As he held the door open for me, he shook his head in amazement.
"And I thought my wife was a serious shopper!"

I ACCOMPANIED my wife and two-year-old daughter to a
department store. The young woman at the check-out counter was wearing a low-cut
blouse and was obviously well endowed. As I presented her with my check and she
leaned forward to copy the information from my driver's license her endowment became even
more obvious. At this point I heard my wife remark, "You can look at those
things, but you'd better not touch them!" I hastily looked around to see my
wife correcting our daughter, who was reaching for items on a nearby shelf.

AT A department store my mother and I waited in a long line
at the checkout counter. When we finally reached the cashier, my mother handed her
an item from the cart. There was no price on it. Exasperated, Mother
exclaimed, "Why do I always pick the one without a price!" "And why
am I always waiting behind you!" the next customer moaned.

ON SATURDAY mornings the parking area at our shopping center
is heavily congested. Once I watched a woman maneuver her fully loaded cart from the store
to the curb. Taking a walkie-talkie from her purse, she deftly extended the antenna.
"Okay, Henry," she said into the device. "I'm out of the,
store." In no time a man drove up, apparently from some distant spot in the car
park, loaded the groceries, and off they went.